Writing FAQ articles

According to the FAQ Intro page, Hammer maintains the FAQ articles, but his account hasn't been active since '07. As a matter of fact, apart from one article two years ago, there hasn't been a FAQ article written in over 6 years. Who handles this now?

There were a few things last week that hit me as topics that should have a FAQ entry (stuff I've answered several times since I've been here). So I started working on a few FAQ articles over the weekend, and was wondering what to do with them. Numbers 2 and 3 are the ones I thought needed to be written, then I found number 1 on the "to do" list:

Working with multiple source files (from the old "to do" list)

Explanation of extern and static

How to compile and use a shared library (Linux/gcc)

Is there much interest out there in adding to the FAQ (AndrewHunter, I'm looking at you: gcc saying --------->undefined reference to sqrt)? If anybody has any other, ideas for FAQ articles, perhaps you could post them or even start writing them.

I think that it is just as important to update the FAQ (and other) articles, but that would be quite a mammoth task.

Originally Posted by Bjarne Stroustrup (2000-10-14)

I get maybe two dozen requests for help with some sort of programming or design problem every day. Most have more sense than to send me hundreds of lines of code. If they do, I ask them to find the smallest example that exhibits the problem and send me that. Mostly, they then find the error themselves. "Finding the smallest program that demonstrates the error" is a powerful debugging tool.

Is there much interest out there in adding to the FAQ (AndrewHunter, I'm looking at you: gcc saying --------->undefined reference to sqrt)? If anybody has any other, ideas for FAQ articles, perhaps you could post them or even start writing them.

I suppose the same goes for the tutorial section

haha...good point. Luckily I do have some time to start working on these ideas, however if we are going to start this (and I do think it is a good idea) I think we should coordinate efforts so that we do not duplicate work and thus waste time.

I agree with you anduril462, I think some of these items need to be completed and others could be refined. So, I would say we should start with the FAQ "to do" list as you mentioned and then move on to a facelift of the FAQs and tutorials. We should use this thread as a prelim signup sheet of who is interested in this task and what they are willing to do / areas of expertise.

I am willing to work on an areas and I do have the time to do it; additionally I do have a deep background with corporate training if no one else wants to organize the effort.

Originally Posted by anduril462

Now, please, for the love of all things good and holy, think about what you're doing! Don't just run around willy-nilly, coding like a drunk two-year-old....

Originally Posted by quzah

..... Just don't be surprised when I say you aren't using standard C anymore, and as such,are off in your own little universe that I will completely disregard.

Warning: Some or all of my posted code may be non-standard and as such should not be used and in no case looked at.

At least, covered to a large extent by elad. I think it would be wiser to incorporate the C bits missing from that article rather than starting completely over. Using project headers and source in either C++ or C is actually not that different. It's a matter of what content belongs in there. I also think that the extern and extern "C" explanations could be covered there.

Though it is not covered in the To-Do list(..and very few existing..(I found only one on this site) ),
I think I could write something about setting up Development Environments in Linux...i.e. how to set up IDE `s to point to the correct libraries (and in some cases compilers!), how to install downloaded libraries, how to set up the IDEs to use gdb without problems....
and a few general ones like using gdb(No, the man page isn't a good teacher at first.. :P)..and a front-end (I just noticed one tutorial explaining the basics of gdb from the terminal, here), using version control ...etc

These are the topics I've trouble finding information when trying out from the first time, so I'd rather someone else not go through some of the trial & errors involved !

@laserlight: It is a big undertaking, but I think it's a "many hands make light work" situation, and I don't really care whether we finish in 5 days or 5 months. I think if we can wrangle up 5 or 10 competent people, and they could all give even 10 minutes a day, it wont be that bad.

@Whiteflags: I'm all for combining related things and not duplicating work. Honestly, I spent about 45 total on the 3 things I wrote, so I don't care if we toss out the multiple files bit, and hack up the extern stuff.

Regarding GDB, we actually have a tutorial covering GDB, but to me it didn't seem that noob friendly. RMS's tutorial seems better, but something even simpler might be good too.

Just throwing in a little suggestion here...
Ideally the FAQ should go to the main page when finished, but in the mean time, we do have the cpwiki where you can edit, discuss, comment and generally just have fun and mess around. There are also a couple of articles there that might be useful merging or moving to the main site.
Once the articles there are finished, they could easily be moved to the main page.
But on the wiki, you have the advantages of editing and creating in advance and also revision history and discussing things on their appropriate pages instead of merged into a single topic.

Also, the URL: cpwiki has a problem
Just in case you want to use it, you have to create a sourceforge account if you don't have it. And finally, before being able to edit anything on the wiki, you need the appropriate privileges. To get them, you'll have to PM Cornedbee, dwks, me or zacs7. That's just how the wiki works unfortunately.

Originally Posted by Adak

io.h certainly IS included in some modern compilers. It is no longer part of the standard for C, but it is nevertheless, included in the very latest Pelles C versions.

Originally Posted by Salem

You mean it's included as a crutch to help ancient programmers limp along without them having to relearn too much.

I'm not sure we're speaking the same "language" here. What I meant is that all the material written (FAQs, etc) should appear on the FAQ page on cprogramming.com when finished. Not stored in cpwiki or any other place.

Oh, and for anyone wanting to edit/create articles in cpwiki, you must first login to cpwiki with your OpenID/SF account. After that, PM one of the aforementioned to be able to edit/create pages.

Last edited by Elysia; 08-31-2011 at 07:35 AM.

Originally Posted by Adak

io.h certainly IS included in some modern compilers. It is no longer part of the standard for C, but it is nevertheless, included in the very latest Pelles C versions.

Originally Posted by Salem

You mean it's included as a crutch to help ancient programmers limp along without them having to relearn too much.